Fuuuccckkkkkiiiinnngggg HELL!! LOL, I have zero luck ever.
Reet, went down thursday to fit some bits to make the car driveable and heloed Ben with the wiring. First off, fitted my seat and battery tray then when we connected everything nup bar coolant hoses etc, just enough to make it spin over. Nothing, starter had somehow earthed its solenoid to itself so after 3 hours of multi-metering we took that off and fixed it. Turned it over, started to make a rattle. Well, did a compression test----
1-zero compression
2-240 psi
3-zero comression
4-240 psi.
f**k.
Ben turned the engine over by hand first so the timing was right. We took the belt, and cam covers off, cams in the rigt way-check, took all the rockers off and 2 inlet valves were lower than the rest=bent.
Whipped the head off and confirmed they were tatored. Pistons were dinked too. Left at about 11-30 and went back this morning at 8-30.
Ben wanted to get a mm machined out of the pistons as valve pockets so the compression wasnt affected but so the valves had enough clearance as the heads had major work and the cams are obviously bigger than standard, nothing would suggest they "should" t**t the valves but better to do it than have to replace valves again.
Took them down to MASS where the guys machined some pockets, went back to AWT to re-fit the rings. A ring on cyclinder 1 was slightly bent and wouldn't spin freely on the piston, great. It must have been like that from factory as the ring is worn really weird. It was past half 5 so we'll order one tommorrow. So, thats the bottom end as far as we can go...
Took all the inlet valves out of the head, 2 are bent as feck, 6 are slightly bent, how thats happened I'll never know but hopefully the piston pockets will solve it!
Either way, the car has gone from on the brink of being completed to back to a pil;e of bits! So so glad we spotted the piston ring though as that would have been a disaster with some RPM!
None of this is a fault of his own and Ben's been brilliant in getting things sorted so please dont start to flame or judge. The engine looked amazing before we stripped it down and we're both confident it'll be back together for FCS, long nights next week though! Attention to detail on this is facing impressive...
Ah well, s**t happens.